


Ink

by MalcolmInSpace



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Earthborn (Mass Effect), F/F, Renegade Commander Shepard, Ruthless (Mass Effect), Synthesis Ending, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 03:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4004149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalcolmInSpace/pseuds/MalcolmInSpace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes telling Commander Shepard's story through her tattoos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by atomic-future's excellent artwork. (http://atomicfuture.tumblr.com/)

Shepard is fourteen and the whine of the tattoo gun cuts through the drunken chatter and smokey haze of the clubhouse. It is initiation night for the Tenth Street Reds. Shepard is the only recruit who gets her ink without a fuss. “She’s hardcore,” the others whisper. They see a leader, even if they don’t understand yet. The gangsters see a good solider.   The veterans see a coming threat.

***********

Shepard is sixteen and a man is dead. The alley where he died is quiet now. As his life leaked away in rivulets and three wheezing gasps so did the crowd that cheered his death. Shepard still has some of his blood, scalp, hair matted in the soles of her boots as she sits in the chair again. She just earned promotion, and the indelible markings of rank that the corpse wears are being etched into her. Her crew celebrates riotously. She wonders which of them will try to earn their own ink and when. She makes herself a promise.

***********

Shepard is eighteen and fulfilling that promise. Sweats slicks her brow and hands but she pushes through, climbing a sheer wall and breaking course records. She pretends not to hear the evaluators talk about her, or the whispers of the other recruits. There is no privacy in the barracks, and her history is written on her skin for all to see. She thinks the evaluators, hardened veterans with their own histories marked into their flesh, are judging her for her past. They are, and they are recommending her for N training after boot camp is complete. Strength of will. Clarity of focus. Leadership material.

***********

Shepard is nineteen and by now the buzz and jab are ritualistic, the bonding of time and memory into flesh. She wears her life on her skin so that it cannot be taken away like that other life, the life she was supposed to have. A string of numbers and letters are being etched along her collarbone, each one a tiny rune of pain radiating along her clavicle. 5923-AC-2826. The badge of the Reds has already been juxtaposed, overlapped but not covered over by an Alliance A. The stars hover over the earth and show a way forward.

***********

Shepard is twenty-two.

Today there are new marks made and to be made. The scars on her face, long and jagged gifts of a slaver’s lash, are sore and bandaged. The bullet holes are being worked into the canvas, spreading out roots of ink to mesh them into the tapestry.   The parlour is buzzing with the sound and vibrations of young soldiers flush with victory and the incredulous beholding of their own survival. Shepard has earned another promotion with blood on her boots. She thinks only of faces with six eyes twisted in hate.

 

The duology of badges over her heart is becoming a trinity. N7. A simple code that unpacks to fire and sweat and blood and the inescapability of purpose. The Skyllian Blitz has propelled her to rank and ceremony. A ceremony also attended by a young man with hate in his heart whose journey mirrors her own. Both will fight, both will break, both will be rebuilt and both will die. She does not know this yet. For now there is the needle and the ink and the pain that cements the past.

***********

Shepard is twenty-four and she has returned to where she began. It is the same artist who gave her those first marks. He sees the marks and does not comment. He sees the fresh wounds and only works around them. He has seen the news of Torfan and knows her face. He works through the night jabbing heavy black and indigo along bones and nerves and soft tissue. It is a memorial and a statement of purpose. Shepard is elsewhere, hearing again and again her voices, her decisions, their deaths. She does not, cannot, feel regret. The scales of victory must be balanced. She makes herself a promise, in the dark of her soul, that someday faces with six eyes will look upward and know _fear_.

***********

Shepard is twenty-nine.

It has been decided that she is the only one who can. She sits in the cabin that once belonged to a good man and works the gun herself. The buzz will not penetrate warship bulkheads. The trinity above her heart is gaining a satellite, separate yet connected. The wings of a SPECTRE, the letter of marque to hunt down another alien with hate in his heart. She is resolved. She is purposeful. She has no idea what lies ahead.

 

Blue fingers and eternity. Liara sees the canopy as living work, a history to be traced with gentle caress and care. Shepard will bear this memory in her soul. Some things do not need ink to be indelible. Tomorrow they go into the bear’s cave with spears.

***********

Shepard has no age, because the dead are outside time. Miranda looks upon the work she must do and squares her shoulders. She sees the scepticism in Jacob’s eyes, but this... meat is more than simple the organic detritus of a person. Miranda does what she must. As she watches, Wilson teases away an armour plate. Beneath is a shrivelled remnant of skin, the tattoos still visible. Only half the A remains, and the N is just a suggestion, but the third is whole. Wilson goes to discard this shred but Miranda stops him. “I think she’ll need this.”

***********

Shepard is 31.

She stands shirtless in the mirror, armour scattered around the room, still smelling of gunfire and explosions and the dust of stolen lives. She barely notices when Miranda walks in. She is caught, trying to trace lines between the original and the resurrected. The tattoos make it easy, clean lines through the tapestry. History excised away to leave room for a new destiny. The Illusive Man is on the vidcomm, wanting to talk about Freedom’s Progress.

 

Shepard is drunk, and has been working the gun on herself for six hours. Harbinger has planted new marks in her flesh. Horizon has marked her spirit. Fuck you, Harbinger. Fuck you, to, Ashley. And the Reapers and the Council and Saren and Anderson and the whole fucking galaxy for birthing up nightmares that only _she_ can fight. Fuck you. Eventually EDI notifies Chakwas, who sneaks in sideways. She keeps the shock off her face. The Commander is soaked in blood and ink and tears and rum. The orange lines have spread down her neck across her shoulders. She is coming apart at the seams. Chakwas does what she can, and tells Joker to take the long way back to Omega. Chakwas sees the truth of the Butcher of Torfan. She wields the knife that butchers the lamb, but she offers up her own soul first.

 

The Shadow Broker is dead. The Shadow Broker lives. The Shadow Broker goes on. The Shadow Broker and the First Human Spectre are not present. Here, in this moment, there is only Liara and Shepard. They have both been swimming upstream for years, pushing their way to the font, but right now, in each other’s arms, they can touch the bottom and stand. Liara slides her fingers along the old lines and the new. There is asari in the pattern now, the geometric poetry of Dilinaga. She sees the orange tears along her love’s skin and knows they are the splitting of the cocoon. Metamorphosis is happening.

 

Shepard stands over three coffins and the corpse of a murdered god and thinks it is a worthy trade. Three more names for the litany. Three friends who will be allowed to sleep in peace through the coming fire. Garrus stands over one with the look of someone staring down a cliff and feeling that subconscious. Maybe if you jump, you can fly. Maybe you’ll realize you just lost your wings before you knew you had them. She rests her hand on his shoulder. Tali’s passing will leave a hole in the galaxy they will not predict. Grunt cheerfully shoves into the moment. “And I thought killing a thresher maw was a good fight. When do we kill our next Reaper?” Soon, Grunt, very soon.

*********

Shepard is thirty-two and the Reapers are coming. She can feel them, feel the bow wave of their progress pushing at her, brushing aside the ripples she started at Bahak. She barely even remembers the promise she fulfilled there in the apocalyptic death of a relay. A tiny apocalypse to herald the real one. At least that one was fast. She’s staring down at the waters around Vancouver, the waters that rose up swallowed the old city to lap gently against the new and soon to lap against ruins. Anderson stands in the doorway and _sees_ her. He sees the ink and the scars and he remembers with a shiver that before she was a Spectre, a soldier, a friend, she was a starving wolf in the cold. He sees the wolf again, in this moment. She is the only one is who _can_.

Shepard is thirty-two and having the last truly happy moments of her life. The party is slipping down now. James found her tattoo kit and they are inking each other, unsteady and sloppy and honest. Garrus watches, amused.

Shepard is thirty-two and holds Liara like it is the last time. It is. Tomorrow there will be fire and death and a desperate run into a light. Shepard is not coming back. They know this, though they do not say it. Liara’s fingers memorize every line and curve of her love. They were never going to grow old together, she always knew that. They have no time left, and they have eternity.

Shepard is thirty-two.

Shepard is beyond age and time. There is only falling and light and a whispered goodbye. She feels herself coming apart, spinning away atom by atom. This time there will be no new addition to the tapestry, no ink to mark this down. The galaxy will be the tapestry now, and Shepard the ink. The only way to save everything is to change everything.

Shepard is thirty-two and she is gone.

***********

Liara is 109 and everything is different. She stands on an alien world and is changed. The cycle is ended. The future is unwritten now. Liara feels Shepard in the tips of her fingers and the rhythm of her pulse. They are together, one story in one canvas, forever.


End file.
